3 ms·
Fungi are really interesting, though at least in terms of eating them many folks in the US are strangely reluctant. But this article does seem to be at pains to
by blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Fungi are really interesting, though at least in terms of eating them many folks in the US are strangely reluctant. But this article does seem to be at pains to tease apart 'intelligence' from 'consciousness' - so I think it's not unreasonable for them to claim fungi can be intelligent without being very similar to us (in the same way we could say that of an ant colony, for example).
- at_a_remove 5y agoI am not sure "strangely" is a good adjective for the reluctance. Many people do not like the taste of various mushrooms. Additionally, for collecting in the wild, there's a lot of These Will Kill You. Meanwhile, a carrot is easy to identify and tasty.
- phaemon 5y agoCarrots were naturally white. They were bred to be orange for reasons you can Google.
- at_a_remove 5y agoStill easy to identify and safe to nibble on, like strawberries.
- rgacote 5y agoAnd wild carrots (Queen Anne's lace) look remarkably like poison-hemlock. Some people also have a dermal reaction to wild carrot as well.
- filoeleven 5y agoThis is not quite a misconception, but there’s some nuance that’s worth writing about. A lot of plants will harm or kill you if you eat them too. The difference is that plants are less ephemeral, so we see more of them more often, and some of the more dangerous ones (e.g. poison ivy) are introduced to most people pretty early. There’s very little education about fungi at all, unless it’s self-directed, so the knowledge on how to ID safe species is just not as present in US culture. I have read (no links, sorry) that the deadly ratio of wild plants is higher than that of wild mushrooms. Most plants like most mushrooms are considered to be “inedible,” meaning they won’t kill you but you won’t want to try and eat them either (flavor, texture). We don’t go around trying to eat maple leaves or grass because they don’t taste good and we just learned early to not try to eat them. This knowledge about mushrooms is lacking. A carrot is easy to identify because it’s generally found on a store shelf, or was grown from a labeled seed packet. Try to find them in the wild, and you’re met with the deadliest common plant in the USA, Water Hemlock. There are a number of safe mushroom species with good ID characteristics and no dangerous lookalikes, and a good number of them are considered to be choice edibles. If you can ID a particular pre-determined leafy green in the wild (which might be harder than you think) then you can do the same for a particular pre-determined mushroom species.
- chubot 5y agoMichael Pollan talks about this in a few of his books. Some cultures are more mycophobic (USA), and some are more mycophilic (Russians, I would say Chinese as well). I think you can attribute some of it to whether there are many poisonous mushrooms in that culture's land area! I googled and found related quotes: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/21/berkeley-talks-transcript-michael-pollan-on-science-psychedelics-and-the-human-mind/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/05/21/berkeley-talks-transcri...
- filoeleven 5y agoKnowing your local species is super important. Apparently lots of poisoning cases in the (western?) US is because one of the toxic species looks a lot like an edible species in Asia.
- samstave 5y agoIm literally sitting here with "THE AUDUBON SOCIETY FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN MUSHROOMS" - And I am still terrified and amazed with them.